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Just a thought, but something I have have noticed in totally unrelated areas is that, due to the recession, a lot of people (certainly in Europe) don't feel safe enough in their jobs to risk surfing the internet half the day any more...

<pre>(GBG charming little chart, which doesn't paste and I can't be bothered to fix...)</pre>

If you run those figures up against two other criteria, numbers of accounts and numbers of admins it may show that as numbers joining go up and increase of number of admins increases then the "wastage" of sysops leaving may not be so critical. I would comment, though, that those admins now leaving are part of the "old school/wild west/small personal website" era of yesteryear - whereas the current crop is more grounded in the struggle of simply maintaining a high profile website. The big uptake on admin functions in the last two years will have an effect as a majority reach burnout (or other RL issues take precedent) this year and the next few.

Oh, and I suppose there is a fourth , more difficult to locate, group of admins; those who have left without turning in the flags.

Oh, and I suppose there is a fourth, more difficult to locate, group of admins; those who have left without turning in the flags.

A bot logs which of them are still active and updates the list each day. As of today there are 1618 accounts with the admin flag, of which 940 are active, and a further 428 "semiactive" (still making edits, but less than 30 edits in the past 3 months), making 250 who've left without turning in the tools. They're listed here by time-since-last-edit, should anyone care.

This post has been edited by Eva Destruction: Wed 7th January 2009, 9:10pm

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QUOTE(LessHorrid vanU @ Wed 7th January 2009, 3:54pm)

(GBG charming little chart, which doesn't paste and I can't be bothered to fix...)

Sorry. I jotted the years and the hand counted numbers down on a simple text editor. Then it occurred to me this would make a nice graph so I inserted appropriate "X's" between the year and numbers. I put it in with simple old-school html <pre> tags. This preserves the text formatting, including whitespace. You have to choose html="on" under the BBCode box for this to work.

15 adminstrators (not including the two bots and the ArbCom desyropping) left in the past month and a half, two today. And not all of them are quiet adminstrators who worked behind the scenes and so forth. Most of them were considered quite powerful. Rebbeca, AGK, head of MedCom, WJBscribe b-crat and MedCom, MaxSem a former steward, Herbythyme who was a respected admin in three projects, Thatcher a former checkuser and clerk, Jossi and Jaranda/Secret both of whom had major influence behind the scenes in some major cases, Kimchi.sg who was the major workhorse admin in 2006, Matilda one of the Australian cabal, Ais523 who did alot of metawiki work, and of course ElinorD. Other prominent editors left in other projects as well. This is a hard blow to the project, especially that RFA isn't really promoting adminstrators, and when they are, it doesn't recover all that experience these editors bring. We should have a poll for which admin we will miss the most.

This post has been edited by Littleunknownadmin: Thu 8th January 2009, 4:04pm

Indeed, Rebecca's departure is probably no real loss the project; she did some good article work, but also represented some very bad thinking about how the site should be run, and there was a time when she was very prone to abusing contributors.

I'd be happy to help pick up the slack for any of these departing admins--I'm fully motivated to do the work and I've got years of experience. Only problem is, they won't let me help. Alas.

Oh, and I suppose there is a fourth, more difficult to locate, group of admins; those who have left without turning in the flags.

A bot logs which of them are still active and updates the list each day. As of today there are 1618 accounts with the admin flag, of which 940 are active, and a further 428 "semiactive" (still making edits, but less than 30 edits in the past 3 months), making 250 who've left without turning in the tools. They're listed here by time-since-last-edit, should anyone care.

You're like the Wikipedia of Wikipedia. If I need to know something IRL, I check WP first and go from there. If I need to know something in WP, I can just go to you first and then go from there.

Jossi and Jaranda/Secret both of whom had major influence behind the scenes in some major cases,

Please, Jaranda/Secret has quit countless times. He is a joke and a drama queen, and if anyone has allowed him to have "major influence behind the scenes" over anything, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

15 adminstrators (not including the two bots and the ArbCom desyropping) left in the past month and a half, two today. And not all of them are quiet adminstrators who worked behind the scenes and so forth. Most of them were considered quite powerful. Rebbeca, AGK, head of MedCom, WJBscribe b-crat and MedCom, MaxSem a former steward, Herbythyme who was a respected admin in three projects, Thatcher a former checkuser and clerk, Jossi and Jaranda/Secret both of whom had major influence behind the scenes in some major cases, Kimchi.sg who was the major workhorse admin in 2006, Matilda one of the Australian cabal, Ais523 who did alot of metawiki work, and of course ElinorD. Other prominent editors left in other projects as well. This is a hard blow to the project, especially that RFA isn't really promoting adminstrators, and when they are, it doesn't recover all that experience these editors bring. We should have a poll for which admin we will miss the most.

There is also the consideration of admins who've pretty much burned out and have semi-retired or quietly started to slip away. The first that come to mind for me are Keeper76, east718, Eliz81, and then I'm fed up to my eyeballs with the bullshit and have decided I don't feel like dealing with it anymore. Pedro is right at the edge of semi-retirement, too. Then there are those who have stopped editing due to loss of time/interest or have just disappeared suddenly. Riana has been busy with school for several months and The Rambling Man has been traveling for months. So much time from the project could leave one disinterested upon return home. Drew17 just disappeared, as did Dfrg.msc. There are many more, those are just the first that come to mind.

Jossi and Jaranda/Secret both of whom had major influence behind the scenes in some major cases,

Please, Jaranda/Secret has quit countless times. He is a joke and a drama queen, and if anyone has allowed him to have "major influence behind the scenes" over anything, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Tell me how I'm a joke and a drama queen, that shit was back in 2005, 06, right now I have major class issues (several math classes at one semester and chemstry), if i fail one of those classes I'm screwed, and college is more important than wikipedia.

Anyways I also agree with LaraLove, too much drama for me to handle, and removing the tools is the best way I don't get involved in that drama and will make me focus less on the project and more on personal matters and article work when I do have the time. Also Littleunkownadmin, I didn't leave because of "burnout", like many of these users seemed like they did. I'll come back with the tools over the summer (work permitting).

It's a shame that AGK left the project though, MedCom would be in shambles without his leadership and with a few other members now in ArbCom. As for the rest, the project could handle their losses, but still all these users leaving because of burnout is alarming.